Can you intall snow leopard over itself?

Hey,
I know on Lion if you have a problem with the computer that isn't starting up you can reinstall Lion over itself and it won't effect any of your files.
My question is can you do this with Snow Lleopard or any other earlier versions of Macintosh.
I would imagine you will be able to do this with Mountain Lion too.
Thanks!

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301270 Scroll down to "Archive and Install” and/or scroll down to Erase and Install
Mac OS X: About the Archive and Install feature

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